Cloud computing ascends the mainstream

By Katie Cincotta

February 19, 2009 — 11.00am

Migration to the internet "cloud" is nigh, says Katie Cincotta.

LAST century we said goodbye to personal generators such as the water wheel, and most of the developed world plugged into the new electric grid, giving us high voltage on the wire with long-distance transmission. Now computers are set to make the big switch, transferring computer power and storage from our humble hard drives to the "cloud" - where everything happens on the internet.

Sun Microsystems predicted it more than a decade ago with its slogan "The Network is the Computer" - a concept that has come to fruition since IT giants such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon began investing millions to build the computer data centres that would drive the remote computing revolution.

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Banking analysts last year forecast that cloud computing could be worth $160billion in the next few years. Last year technology players were scouring the world for remote sites near water supplies, which they need to keep the clusters cool - places to build cloud server farms, the equivalent of computer generating stations with countless computers lined up to take on the hard work that used to happen in-house.

Yet Microsoft and Google have scaled back plans. It is unclear if this is a result of the economic downturn or if the future of the cloud computing is uncertain.

In theory, outsourcing in this fashion means we can say goodbye to endless back-ups and software upgrades, and scale down to cheaper, low-specification computers. The all-knowing, all-seeing cloud also promises to connect us to all of our technology baggage from any computer terminal in the world.

Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch, says in migrating to the cloud, personal computers will likely get back to basics.

"For the mainstream user, getting the most powerful machine isn't going to be that big of a deal any more. The biggest growth areas in PCs now are the stripped-down netbooks, which are basically designed as cloud computing terminals - most of the stuff you do, you're running off the internet," says Carr.

So, who's cloud surfing already? James Broberg, a computer researcher with the University of Melbourne, says several people in its Grid Computing and Distributed Systems (GRIDS) lab are using the cloud to tap into their data remotely, with services such as Microsoft Live Mesh and Apple's MobileMe.

"It's the latest craze and a number of people in our department are moving into it. It's quite useful for data back-up and I'm using it to synchronise my contacts and calendar when I'm on the road," says Dr Broberg.

Local broadband isn't yet fast or cheap enough for Dr Broberg to consider moving his 40gigabytes of music from his notebook to the web, which is a peeve that's holding back other cloud enthusiasts such as Lifehacker blogger Angus Kidman.

"I still tend to work on the hard drive, and only work on Google Docs if I'm in transit. If you're constantly sending stuff up and down, a lot of service providers calculate what you're sending and what you're receiving (notables are Telstra and Optus). Because I travel a lot it starts getting expensive," says Kidman.

Small businesses such as The Domain Publisher, in Melbourne, which builds online applications such as Stockwatch, have been amazed at the streamlining they have gained since moving to web-based word processing.

"Google Docs makes things far more efficient in terms of accessing and sharing work. We don't have to email multiple copies, which becomes confusing and frustrating," says the company's content publisher, Henry Baleviani.

Mr Baleviani says using the cloud for content development has been a liberating experience. "If I have an idea or need to work on a document in the heat of the moment, I can do so on the spot; all I need is a computer with an internet connection."

With many of us apathetic about backing up our files, data protection is another of the cloud's great allures. Kidman cites a friend who had three hard drives fry at the same time - a disaster that could have been avoided in the cloud.

"If he'd been writing everything in Google Docs that problem wouldn't have happened. Or you can set up a service that lets you synchronise one core directory, like My Documents, for online storage so you don't lose data," says Kidman.

In the US, where in the first phase of investment much of the cloud infrastructure is being built, IT pundits have made a much bigger leap to the "utility" computing model.

Manhattan-based Paul Murphy, a technical partner with design and technology firm Juicy Orange, has found the cloud a godsend - both financially and logistically. A year ago, he moved his company's client sites to Amazon's EC2 Cloud and he hasn't looked back.

"Moving to the cloud was like dying and going to heaven. Not having to lay out money for servers is a big deal for a business like ours. This allows us to 'rent' everything, on an as-needed basis: CPUs, memory, disks, firewalls, bandwidth ... we turn machines up and down as needed, we can store data at many levels, move IP addresses between machines, change firewall rules on the fly - all very boring stuff for most people, but to someone who's been managing software in data centres for almost two decades, this is magic."

Juicy Orange pays 10 to 80cents per hour for the virtual service, which means it has stopped forking out for physical hardware - it has become a web development company with none of its own computers.

"We don't spend hours and days waiting for physical hardware installations any more. I'd be hard-pressed coming up with any real disadvantages. Once we got over the learning hump, it's been nothing but better," says Mr Murphy.

"Corporations are very concerned about the security of their data and it being leaked out to their competitors. It's not a long-term roadblock, but it will slow things down."

Even in the US, where cloud services are originating, hardcore cloud operators are rare, says Carr. Instead, people are beginning to cloud-hop for backing up or storing their data, or using popular cloud applications such as Gmail and Facebook.

Alan Noble, Google Australia's engineering director, says web-based email was the start of the cloud's ascent to the mainstream.

"In some respects it's been happening for years with web-based email - that's your canonical cloud computing application. Now I have very few documents that reside on my hard drive. We believe in eating our own dog food," he says.

But Mr Noble says the cloud's true revolution will be in enabling people to communicate in new ways online, such as using Gmail's Internet Message Access Protocol (which stores email remotely) to create a central party invitation, where guests can comment or tick off menu items.

"Cloud computing is not simply a replacement for what we do today - it's going to open up new ways of doing things. The attachment nightmare will be a thing of the past," says Mr Noble.

Carr can now synchronise data from his two Mac computers (desktop and notebook) using Apple's MobileMe service - doing away with copying files onto his USB drive. "It allows you to have a cloud folder on your desktop, which is automatically synched to Apple's data centre and both of my computers, so I don't have to worry about back-ups. For me, that was the first really valuable use of the cloud."

And while we wrestle with the risk of exposing our every computer move to big business, Carr says many of us will be relieved. "I think we'll be more than happy to let an outside company worry about back-ups, compatibility and upgrades. I don't think very many of us enjoyed being the amateur computer technician and most of us are more than happy to offload that to the techies."

For cloud converts such as Mr Murphy, this is no passing fad - but he's trying to keep the web's hottest new horizon a secret.

"We don't talk about it very much, because it's a competitive advantage and most people in our industry haven't understood the implications of the change yet. This is pushing everything in the computing stack onto the network, as a service, which profoundly changes the way we solve problems and design software."

From his perspective, the forecast for cloud computing is blue skies: "Just about anyone who's paid attention to the evolution of computing will agree that we've been moving in this direction for a long time.

"No doubt marketers will do their best to make it the next big thing and take advantage of the hype, but it's no more fad than the internet. It makes sense, and it's here to stay."